I wanted to share this exciting and important announcement with the CNI
community.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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September 7, 2017

A grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will enable systems to be
outfitted with award-winning LOCKSS digital preservation capabilities.

Stanford, CA--For eighteen years, the Stanford University LOCKSS (Lots
of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) Program has supported the digital
preservation needs of a diverse and growing community of institutions
worldwide. With the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, a major re-architecture effort is currently underway that
will enable the unique functionalities of the LOCKSS software to be
embedded in other systems for digital content management and
preservation, further broadening access to best-in-class digital
preservation capabilities.
The core of the LOCKSS software is a peer-to-peer data integrity
validation and repair mechanism, a feature built upon peer-reviewed
research to mitigate the real threats that centralization poses to the
long-term persistence of digital information. This and other LOCKSS
software elements, including tooling for automated metadata extraction
and enhancements for discovery of scholarly communications within web
archives, will be made available to the community as documented web
services. Integration of these technologies will enhance other digital
library, repository, content management and acquisition systems.
"More content is destroyed by people's actions than any other means;
the LOCKSS technology secures content against this very real threat.
Disaggregating LOCKSS components into web services for others to use
holds the potential to significantly upgrade preservation treatment
levels for a greater amount and a wider variety of content,” notes
recently-retired LOCKSS Program Chief Scientist Dr. David S.H.
Rosenthal, emphasizing the significance of the project.
Nicholas Taylor, LOCKSS Program Manager, says that the upgraded LOCKSS
software will advance the preservation of more, and more kinds, of
digital content. “LOCKSS technologies have only ever been applied in
LOCKSS networks; the software re-architecture opens up many new
possibilities,” says Taylor. “We’re working to make LOCKSS even more
accessible and useful as a general-purpose digital preservation
technology solution.”
More information about the LOCKSS software components and the
re-architecture project will become available over the next year
through the LOCKSS Program website (https://www.lockss.org/).